Passportes du Soleil – the sunny day

So, we went to the Passportes du Soleil… again! I’ve lost count, but the numberplates are realy piling up. We started with a sunny day of bikepark fun in Les Gets. In the lift going up I thought I saw a Juliana Roubion going down (turned out it was the Nomad) but an idea came in my head that I couldn’t shake… could we make it possible for me to test-ride this wicked looking bike…

YES WE CAN!

Within minutes I had a few inches available to me in the next Fiets edition and I needed to get to work. Don’t get distracted by the pretty face, find out what’s the big deal with this Juliana Roubion bike. Specced to the nines with the Cane Creek Double Barrel air shock, Rock Shox Pike, Enve wheels with DT Swiss hubs, XTR brakes and XX1 groupset. What more could you possibly want? I mean really…?

Alizée Baron was the girl I saw flying on her Nomad, she asked to come along with us. She’s a pro ski’er and rides bikes for training and we had a great time in Les Gets. The first run was all about the setting and the “ooh’s and aaah’s” and boy did we have a crowd piercing at us… enve uhm envy I meant to say 😉

Short review on the Juliana Bicycles Roubion

The next runs where all about letting go, the Roubion’s top speed way exceeds my comfortzone and my skill-level too at times. It’s nice and tight and rails into corners so fast, I couldn’t keep up. But the Enve wheels allowed to get up to speed within a few pedal strokes so every corner was a new opportunity to get it right. With great sadness I returned the bike to Race-Co-mtb and dutifully wrote my piece for Fiets, basically:

Awesome color coordination: yes, pretty colors matter.

Cane Creek Double Barrel Air is the new benchmark, the Pike even struggled to keep up. You’ll need a university degree though to set it up.

So light feeted, you’ll plunge into corners at full speed, you’ll need to work on your skill set.

Girly touches: specialty grips are nice, seat to be honest this is so personal you may as well sell bikes without saddles, much like pedals.

Bars, pretty much wide enough, but you know when it’s just wide enough… you may want to go wider.

Goes anywhere, up and down, just point and pedal pretty much. Nothing complicated here, carry when it gets too steep. But it’s so light you’ll hardly notice it 😉